The Annex: the point of return, read line by line

Today’s annex is the UN Environment Programme’s Emissions Gap Report 2026, “The Point of Return”, published in Nairobi on Wednesday and read here through UNEP’s own release¹.

What it assumes. That global warming will pass 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels¹. The question it asks is narrower: what is the “lowest possible” overshoot? Its answer is a path on which warming peaks at 1.7–1.8°C around mid-century and returns to or below 1.5°C by 2100, with about a 50% chance¹.

What that path costs in emissions. Global greenhouse gas emissions would have to fall 18% by 2030, 45% by 2035 and 69% by 2040, all against 2025¹. Full implementation of national pledges, the NDCs, would give 5–8% by 2030 and 11–15% by 2035¹. The required rate is 5.7% a year for 2025–2035, faster than the roughly 5% in the IPCC’s earlier pathways¹.

What happens without it. Current policies point to 2.8°C this century; delivered pledges to 2.6°C¹. UNEP says both are worse than last year’s projections because of the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and revised estimates of historical emissions¹. Every five years of CO2 at current levels adds about 0.1°C to peak warming¹.

The column that already worked. More than 220 policy evaluations are cited. Electricity-sector policies cut emissions by an average of 9%; carbon taxes and cap-and-trade schemes by 5–13%¹. Since the Paris Agreement, global renewable capacity has grown three times faster than anticipated and solar seven times faster¹. If that continues, with additional policy, the world would be on track to triple renewable capacity by 2030¹.

The caveat it states itself. The path also needs the removal and permanent storage of about 320 gigatonnes of CO2 this century, roughly eight years of 2024’s emissions, and UNEP calls the chances of achieving that “uncertain”¹.

The reading. Strip out the adjectives and the document is a set of rates, a gap between two columns, and a list of policies with measured effects. “Overshoot is not surrender,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres¹. The more useful sentence is the dull one: the tools that cut 9% in electricity are known, and the report counts them.